Metropolitics

Disposability in the City: A Review of Waste Worlds

Lily Baum Pollans — 2022-07-05T05:00:00Z

Lily Pollans reviews Jacob Doherty's Waste Worlds: Inhabiting Kampala's Infrastructures of Disposability, which shows how the way in which societies define and manage waste can shed light on political, social, and economic power.
---- Series: Urban Wastes, Present and Future In 1966, anthropologist Mary Douglas argued that defining and managing dirt is an essential act of worldmaking. It is through the categorization of what is pure and what is contaminated that societies make meaning and

- Reviews / waste, waste management, Africa, Uganda, Kampala, Global South, infrastructure

Urban Wastes, Present and Future

Lily Baum Pollans — 2022-04-29T05:00:00Z

Lily Pollans guest-edits this series for Metropolitics that focuses on the various ways in which waste is part of the urban environment—how waste produces urban space, the local management of waste, its environmental impacts, and the forms of social justice it gives rise to.
---- ▼ Jump to the list of articles in this series ▼ All cities are made, one way or another, from waste. Some cities, like the coastal cities of the northeastern United States, are literally constructed on land conjured

- Series / waste, waste management, space, production of the city, environment

From non-planning to cutting-edge policy: the transformation of waste management in Boston since the 1980s

Lily Baum Pollans — 2019-06-11T05:00:00Z

Recycling and composting are hot topics. Lily Baum Pollans argues that Boston's changing approach to waste management represents a more radical shift than some might think.
In 2018, the city of Boston banned plastic bags and launched a zero-waste initiative. In doing so, Boston joined a growing list of cities using solid-waste management to advance sustainability and climate goals by closing material loops and reducing consumption. Despite recent setbacks in the global recycling market, these

- Essays / United States, Boston, environment, waste, waste management, recycling, sanitation, hygienism